I filed for my first unem­ploy­ment pay­ment a lit­tle over a week ago (Sunday, to be pre­cise).  I have since waited not-so-patiently for the money to arrive in my account.  As of writ­ing this post, I have yet to see a dime of it.

I have called repeat­edly to get a sta­tus from the auto­mated sys­tem over the past week.  Each time it sim­ply says that my pay­ment hasn’t processed yet.  It’s no sur­prise that the pay­ment sys­tem is under siege right now.  Thanks to the Bush Crash, we’ve got more peo­ple out of work than we have had for  quite a long time even in a rel­a­tively sta­ble state like Colorado.   Idiotically, there’s no way to check your pay­ment sta­tus online, so I am forced to call the sys­tem over and over again.  Today, I can’t even get through.  I want to know if there is a prob­lem so I can sort it out imme­di­ately. But I have no way of knowing.

It shouldn’t take a week to process a pay­ment.  Not in this era of auto­mated deposits.  People are rely­ing on that money to pay their bills and feed their chil­dren.  In our case, we have a lit­tle sav­ings to get by on while we wait, but each time they do this, our buffer against what I call “The Cardboard Box Life”  gets a lit­tle slim­mer.  And we’re bet­ter off than most.  I can’t imag­ine how a sin­gle par­ent is han­dling this system.

Filing for unem­ploy­ment in the first place is hum­bling and embarass­ing.  I felt humil­i­ated to do it, and every­thing about the process treats you like a sus­pect in a crim­i­nal case.  The least they could do is make sure we receive our pay­ments in a timely fash­ion.  We’re not talk­ing about walking-around money here.  We’re talk­ing about rent and prescriptions.

Colorado gov­ern­ment, get your act together.  Speed up the pay­ment process.  Use some of that stim­u­lus money to hire some of the unem­ployed to bol­ster your ranks in the depart­ment.  Do some­thing.  A lot of peo­ple are hurt­ing out there, and you are fail­ing them.  You can do better.

Hopefully I’ll land this free­lance gig for March and I won’t need to col­lect unem­ploy­ment for the month of March.  It’s ridicu­lous how few jobs I am find­ing lately for which to apply.   Again, I say to you my most excel­lent read­ers, if you need a web­site built, or know some­one who does, please con­tact me.  (Yep, turned that post into a whor­ing post.  Many of my posts are going to end this way I am afraid).

Tagged as: colorado, freelance, jobsearch, unemployment